Ask the Author: Debbie Young
Answered Questions (10)
Debbie Young
"The Girl Who Fled the Picture" by Jane Anderson and "Flat White Lies" by A A Abbott - plus many, many more. Books are my favourite souvenir of summer holiday travels, and I always come home with more than I took away with me! I love exploring secondhand and vintage bookshops, charity shops and local sales to find unusual and obscure books - I never fail to find a treasure somewhere!
Debbie Young
The time we found a dead body in a parked van when we were touring Scotland by camper van, but I'd never write that one out of respect for the poor chap who died and for his surviving family.
Debbie Young
The ninth Sophie Sayers Cozy Mystery, "Driven to Murder", in which a passenger on the bus from Wendlebury Barrow to Slate Green takes a fatal one-way trip. It's down to Sophie to find the killer, stop him striking again, and save the village bus service!
After that, I'll be starting work on a brand new cozy crime trilogy - more news on that to follow soon!
After that, I'll be starting work on a brand new cozy crime trilogy - more news on that to follow soon!
Debbie Young
I would step through the Looking Glass into Alice's world, and retrace her steps through my favourite childhood story. I especially love the White Knight, the White Queen and the Sheep's shop - even though I don't play chess! (That will only make sense to people who have read the story, which I highly recommend!)
Debbie Young
I don't really believe in writer's block. If you think you've got it, just write any old rubbish to keep that pen flowing or that keyboard rattling. You can always go back and edit it later, or chop it out altogether, and you'll soon find yourself back on track.
Debbie Young
I had a handful of very short stories about a few characters going through specific changes in their lives, and I decided that "Quick Change" would be a smart title idea for a collection of stories on that theme. I like themed collections, rather than random ones, so after I'd written the first few, I then thought around the theme, and devised the others - then to make them even more orderly, arranged them in the order of the age of key characters, from newborn baby to an elderly widow. I was very pleased with the way the disparate stories now all hang together, to make the book greater than the sum of the parts.
Debbie Young
Just by looking around me. I'm an avid people-watcher (you have been warned!) On buses, trains, in supermarket queues, wherever I go, overhearing the odd comment or seeing an exchange of looks or actions between strangers can be enough to set me rustling up a back story and turning real life into fiction.
Debbie Young
The opportunity to express yourself and articulate your thoughts so that they can be shared with the wider world. The feeling that you might just change the world, a little a time, through your work. And all without leaving the comfort of your own home!
Debbie Young
My next book will be a collection of short stories called "Married in Haste", about a series of marriages that from the outside don't look as if they should work. Like my other collections of short stories, it'll be fun, funny and insightful, with some serious messages and darker undercurrents too - my trademark style, in fact!
After that, I'll be honing my first novel, which I drafted during NaNoWrMo. I'm going to have fun with this one - almost every character in it is an author!
After that, I'll be honing my first novel, which I drafted during NaNoWrMo. I'm going to have fun with this one - almost every character in it is an author!
Debbie Young
Don't forget to write! Set aside a fixed amount of time to write each day and protect it from other activities. Don't wait for inspiration to strike - just get writing! Soon you'll be writing faster and more easily, and you'll build up a good body of raw material to edit and turn into books.
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